


Love is for the Birds (and other cliches)

by Wondersheep



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bird Nerds, Fluff, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 16:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4356656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wondersheep/pseuds/Wondersheep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magic happened, and now every so often a bird shows up to lead a person to their soul mate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is for the Birds (and other cliches)

**Author's Note:**

> *waves fingers in front of face* There is no continuity to see here. Move along.
> 
> Rating is for swearie words.

The warbling tweeting song just wouldn’t go away. Clint cracked one eye far enough to see the small bird sitting on his alarm clock. 

The alarm clock informed him it was 5.54am. The bird cocked its head, hopped closer, and cheeped at Clint.

He groaned and flopped over onto his back. “Aw, bird. No.” 

*** 

‘Lovebirds’ took on a whole new meaning after That Incident. Most of the world only knew what SHIELD wanted them to know, but Clint had the great joy to be at ground zero of the whole thing. “You see,” he told the bird as he opened the laptop, “When a overpowered, undertrained, punk ass mage gets dumped, he decides to set up a major ritual in front of his ex’s apartment. The ritual was supposed to show her how much they were meant to be together. And since that ritual involved human hostages and some weird slime monster demon things on Dekalb and Throop, the Avengers got called in.”

The bird decided to perch on the top of the laptop screen and sing at Clint some more. “Don’t poop on this, it’s my personal one. The last thing I need is SHEILD servers looking at *this* browser history. So, anyway,” he clicked on the web browser, “We saved the humans, which made the ritual backfire, and now you little twits show up occasionally to take a person to their soulmate.”

Clint typed, ‘tiny brown bird spotted belly black beak red tail’ into the search bar. As an afterthought he added ‘pretty song’. 

“Here goes nothing,” he told the bird, and hit enter, then sighed. “Only 86,000 results to go through.”

***

Clint’s phone buzzed. plz tell me u didn’t get a bird

He stared at it in shock, then replied to Kate, WHO TOLD YOU

A few seconds later, the phone actually rang. He answered it “Who told you!”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, tell me it’s not a plain chachalaca.”

“A what? What are you talking about?”

“Tell me it’s not a plain chachalaca!”

“What the hell is a chachalaca?”

“It’s big and brown and keeps OW!” sounds of a scuffle, then, “It keeps biting me!” 

Something in his chest eased. “No. Mine’s tiny and won’t shut up.” 

“Oh, thank God.” The silence stretched, then Kate said, “Not that I don’t like you or anything…”

“It would be creepy, gross, and weird,” he agreed. 

“Right. I’m gonna go now.” Kate hung up before he could say goodbye. 

***

It was a testament to New York that no one actually stared at the man walking down the street with a bird sitting on his head. To be fair, Clint’s bird (which he’d tentatively identified as a Hermit Thrush, ha fucking ha) was a tiny thing that could rest in the palm of his hand. One lady he passed had a fucking crane of some sort waddling behind her, its webbed feet not really designed to negotiate concrete and intense pedestrian traffic. 

He made it all the way into Stark Tower and up to the Avengers community kitchen-slash-conference room before anyone actually said anything. Surprisingly, that person was Bruce, who looked up from his teacup, and said, “Congratulations.”

That, of course, drew Tony’s attention. “Congratulations? What congratulations why congratulations--- BIRDBRAIN! You got a bird! Look at that. Who’s the lucky lady?”

Steve sighed, “Tony, that’s rude.” 

The giant blue parrot on the stand by the window stopped preening long enough to say, “Tony, that’s rude,” and then went back to rearranging its feathers.

“Stop teaching Hopper how to scold me,” Tony retorted, then threw an after the thought, “Congrats,” towards Clint.

“Can we just get on with today?” Clint sighed. 

Natasha strode into the room, a stack of file folders in her arms. “We’re scheduled for team sparring in an hour,” she said. “Here’s the suggested new formations based on that little thing with Namor last week.”

“I am going to eat calamari every day for the rest of my life in revenge,” Sam said, taking his folder from her as she walked around the table. 

“Where’s Agent Agent?” Tony asked. 

“He’s unavailable.” Natasha said, “I’ll be running the training today.”

Clint opened his file and his bird decided to start grooming his hair. He almost swatted it, but stopped himself in irritation and tried his best to pay attention to the tactical discussion around him. 

***  
Natasha pulled him aside after team sparring, which in his expert opinion was a total disaster. “You’re distracted,” she said, a statement, not a question. 

“Uh, yeah,” he drawled, pointing at his head. The damn bird took that as an invitation to perch on his finger and warble at the two of them. Clint carefully picked it up and put it back on the top of his head. “I’m a thirty-seven year old assassin, and now suddenly I’m supposed to go out and find starry-eyed love with a total stranger? Who probably doesn’t have security clearance so that’s going to be fun.”

“It’s not always a total stranger,” she pointed out. 

“Close enough for government work,” he shot back. “My social life consists entirely of high places, high-powered rifles, and you.”

She gave him that look which was only about half ‘You’re completely ridiculous’ and then said, “By the way, Coulson needs to see you.”

“Now?” She just turned around and walked towards where Sam was talking to Steve. “Now,” he muttered to himself and headed for the elevators.

***

Clint knocked on the door to Coulson’s office. When there was no answer, he knocked again, louder.

This time, he heard a crash from inside, so he opened the door and went through low, just in case. As soon as he cleared the threshold, the bird took off from Clint’s head, smacking him in the face with its wings and singing even louder than ever. 

“--useless bird of course you had to perch on the least stable--” Coulson froze in the awkward position, where he was reaching to pick up a model that had fallen on the floor. He looked, wide-eyed at Clint, who realized his mouth was open as he stared at the two-- TWO birds now singing at each other and bouncing back and forth on the desk blotter.  
“Well,” Coulson said, his mouth open to continue but no words came out.

“Huh.” Clint said, things ticking over in his head like cascading dominoes. The incident in Kavala, the whole months after Isfahan, and then that time with those things--- “This actually explains a lot.”

“It doesn’t have to--” Coulson stopped himself, stood up straight. He adjusted his jacket to lie flat and started again. “I understand this might make things awkward but I will continue to treat you with the utmost professional courtesy at all times.”

“All times?” Clint said. 

“Our current relationship is perfectly satisfactory for me,” Coulson continued. 

“Okay. Um. What if it’s not for me?” Clint said. The two birds stopped singing suddenly, and that drew both their attention. 

Clint was sure his bird (well, he thought it was his bird, they looked almost identical) was glaring at him. 

Coulson blinked, his only tell that the words affected him. “I can have you reassigned to a different handler today.” 

“If you want. I was thinking maybe, you know.” Clint gestured awkwardly to the birds. “We might as well take them out to dinner. Just, to try it out. Maybe. If you want.”

Coulson smiled. a small smile, but it filled his eyes with warmth. “That would be. Acceptable.” 

The birds had gone back to bouncing excitedly around each other on the desk, tweeting and chirping. Impulsively, Clint took a step forward and held out his hand. Coulson twined their fingers together and they watched the birds in silence for a few minutes.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a hermit thrush singing. https://youtu.be/w9vHS6JdHog
> 
> This is a plain chachalaca doing... chachalaca things. https://youtu.be/NdlC96O2xOw
> 
> Why did I write this? Plotbunny. Really. I have no other reason.


End file.
